Archivelogmode - I'm having a "senior" moment . . .

I must be overlooking the obvious . . . .

Platform - NT4, sp6, Oracle workgroup edition 8.1.6. Two databases/instances -- named NIRA and NIRB. These were brought up in NOARCHIVELOG and had been running that way for some time (don't ask). I added LOG_ARCHIVE_START=TRUE to the init.ora file for NIRA, shutdown and restarted the database. When it came up, an ARCHIVE LOG LIST showed it was still in NOARCHIVE LOG mode.

Question one: what did I miss -- why didn't it come up in ARCHIVELOG mode?

Next I went to DB Studio and used the GUI to set archive log mode. This also bounced the database, and this time it came up in ARCHIVELOG mode. 14 minutes after restarting, it spun off 133 archive log files in a 7 minute period, then quieted down. I don't belive there was any real amount of application activity going on. Was this some sort of "catch up" work? If so, why did it wait 15 minutes after startup to get going?

--
Ed Stevens
(Opinions expressed do not necessarily represent those of my employer.)